Incentive bill for Okatie Crossing dies in House

The tax-incentive bill for the Okatie Crossing shopping mall is dead in the state Legislature.

"It just got caught up in the sausage making. Disappointment is an understatement," Sen. Clementa Pinckney, D-Ridgeland, the main sponsor, said Thursday afternoon from Columbia.

Just the night before, Pinckney said he was optimistic an amended version the Senate passed Wednesday would clear the House with compromise support he was promised from Rep. Bill Herbkersman, R-Bluffton, and others.

But a dispute over House vs. Senate rules prevented a House vote on the amended bill before representatives adjourned around 1 a.m. Thursday, according to both Pinckney and Sen. Tom Davis, R-Beaufort. Herbkersman could not be reached for comment.

There is no chance the bill can be brought back up when the House and Senate return to session June 29 to take up vetoes by Gov. Mark Sanford only, they said.

Hardeeville City Manager Ted Felder downplayed the impact of the bill's demise on the approximately 270-acre site at U.S. 278 and S.C. 170 in Hardeeville.

"It won't affect the development of the property either way. We have always maintained that the property will be developed regardless," he said Thursday.

"Without the incentive, we have likely sent a unique and extraordinary high-end fashion opportunity to another state, but we will still move forward with job creation and expansion of our tax base."

After wrapping up most business on June 3, the legislators returned to Columbia on Tuesday to try to wrap up action on vetoes and other unfinished business but now need to go back again to consider more veto overrides.

The final version of the bill kept a provision to allow Hardeeville to impose a local-option sales tax - at 1 percent if adopted by the City Council only and at 2 percent if approved by voter referendum - on commerce at the mall.

The Senate amendment added to the Senate bill an excerpt from the House version that would have required any developer to comply with Beaufort County's stringent stormwater management rules, rather than Jasper County's weaker regulations.

Davis said he hesitantly agreed to and co-sponsored with Pinckney an amendment for the limited purpose of adding the stormwater provisions

The already heavily amended bill would have given tax revenues to the developer of the site if targets to bring 2,500 full-time jobs and invest $100 million were met.

The bill had originally directed state sales tax revenue for the state general fund to be rebated back to the developer. The Sembler Co., pitching a proposed $400 million Okatie Crossing mall, had lobbied intensively for a state sales tax rebate.

"The bill just died on the vine," Pinckney said. "It was so close and yet so far away .... It just needed another day."

Davis said the bill was aimed at giving Sembler a special deal, wrong from the start, and he will fight it again if it comes back.

"The bottom line for me is that a retail incentive bill is unsafe at any speed. It is just not a good idea for public funds to be used to improve private property for the benefit of a private developer, irrespective of whether the tax dollars are state or local. ...

"Finally, I have very serious concerns about a retail mall operation the scale of what is proposed by Sembler being placed at the headwaters of the Okatie River."

He said that 1.5 million square feet of new retail mall space at the headwaters of the Okatie River could never meet state river protection standards. "Simply put, this massive amount of impervious surface and the stormwater it sheds could be the death knell for our estuarial system."

Pinckney said he's not giving up. When the next Legislature opens in January 2011, "We'll start over again ... and we will make it work. This is too important. I still believe we need to get our people back to work. I believe creating jobs is our number one priority," he said. "We need to put the area back to work."

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Kudos to Sen Tom Davis for all the work he did on the Okatie Crossing legislation. I've been following his efforts for months and IMO he has navigated some very rocky shoals with good will and good sense.

Maybe the Okatie Crossings property will end up being developed for some other retail project, but at least now there won't be a huge, undercapitalized, half-done project sitting like a white elephant for years while the courts decide who needs to complete it and the runoff keeps on a-runnin'.

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